To put it simply, there is much we don’t know about the New Heaven and the New Earth. That knowledge isn’t really for us yet. However, there are a few things we can discern.
When you die and reach heaven, will all your earthly sufferings, including regret, guilt, missed opprtunities, misunderstandings etc all dissapear?
Essentially, yes. There will, for most people, probably be a period of purification which will be filled with pain, sorrow, and shame for our sins. However, it will also be filled with the indescribable joy of
knowing that we are saved, and that we have only this last purification to go through before we can embrace our Lord in the Beatific Vision.
Once that purification is over and we enter into Heaven there will be no more pain, regret, guilt, etc.
The hardest part of this for us to accept is usually that we will feel no pain at the loss of our loved ones. It’s hard to imagine, but I like the way C.S. Lewis put it:
The demand of the loveless and the self-imprisoned that they should be allowed to blackmail the universe: that till they consent to be happy (on their own terms) no one else shall taste joy: that theirs should be the final power; that Hell should be able to
veto Heaven." … Either the day must come when joy prevails and all the makers of misery are no longer able to inflict it
r else for ever and ever the makers of misery can destroy in others the happiness they reject for themselves.
(This is in response to the main character being confronted with a women who does not suffer at the eternal loss of her husband)
How about the physical flaws in your body that you hate so much?
This one is debatable. After the Resurrection, Jesus still possessed the wounds of His crucifixion. He even offers St. Thomas the opportunity to place his fingers within the wounds to prove that He is really there, really the Crucified Lord. What we don’t know is if this is the natural state of the glorified body, or if Jesus just chose to retain His wounds as proof of His death and resurrection.
Personally, I expect it to be a mixture. Lost limbs, blindness, things of that nature, will be healed. However, I expect that martyrs will bear some evidence of their martyrdom as testimony to their love for God. These wounds will not cause pain, there is no pain in Heaven, but there may be something left of them.
will life in heaven really be a new beginning of life for everyone, regardless of how one lived his or her life on earth?
Unfortunately, no. For those who reject God and are damned it will be the beginning of an endless death, endless bodily suffering to go along with the spiritual suffering of Hell from before the general resurrection. This is what’s referred to in the Bible as the second death. Once you are damned there is no escaping Hell, and the General resurrection will to you be a prospect of great horror. Your evils will be made known to all, and your pain will only be compounded by the addition of your glory-less body.
